Episode 120: Top 10 Marketing Mistakes That A Lot Small Business Owners Make
It’s a coaching episode where Fiona talks about the top marketing mistakes she has witnessed small (and big) business owners make when it comes to marketing their business. Listen now to find out what the top 10 mistakes are and how her course, Marketing For Your Small Business, may be able to help you!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Marketing For Your Small Business
Top 10 Marketing Mistakes
#1. Not knowing their goals.
#2 Limit what's possible, really go big, think crazy, put it, put the craziest thing out that you can think of and then look at.
#3 Not really understanding your audience.
#4 Not validating ideas.
#5 Spending too much time in the awareness stage of the bio cycle rather than in the post purchase and advocacy.
#6 Treating every sale or client or customer as a one night stand.
#7 Being distracted by every shiny new social media platform.
#8 Not aligning their marketing plans with their personality.
#9 Switching direction because of your competitors rather than what your audience actually needs from you.
#10 Not understanding that marketing is ultimately about brand loyalty, not just sales.
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Links/Resources Mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript:
We don't often survey our customers enough, so when I go into company, sometimes they'll say, we've got an email list, it's 22,000 and I'm like, that's awesome. How often do you survey them? Never. Or we have this many followers on social media. Do you ever do polls? Do you do questions in your stories? No. Do you ever do polls on Facebook? No. And again, we're missing this opportunity to really understand our audience. And if you've been in business for some time, maybe you're like, yeah, yeah, I did all of this at the start. Or I paid an agency to do some research and focus groups. And what we can fail to see, though, is that our audience, over time is changing.
Hello and welcome to Episode 120 of My Daily Business Coach podcast. We are in our fifth lockdown here in Melbourne. And by the time you are listening to this, let's hope we are out of it. And it could be a thing of the past, but it may not be. So hold on tight. If you're in Melbourne, if you're in Sydney, anywhere else in the world that is experiencing some sort of lockdown as a result of this pandemic, which is just sort of like the energiser bunny just keeps going and going and going. But I am really, really fortunate. You know, I have a huge amount of privilege and I am very fortunate to live and work where I do, which is in North Warrandyte, in the outskirts of Melbourne here. And I'm looking out onto this beautiful bushland as I record this. And I just want to pay my respects to the traditional owners of this land or ordinary people of the Kulin nation and just sort of acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. This is stolen land and which I make my money. I make this podcast and kind of just pay my respects to any First Nation's elders, past, present and emerging and any other kind of elders that are listening to this. The world is just full of so much wisdom and so often I think that that wisdom is contained in people with lived experience, whether it's of First Nations lived experience, but also just elderly people. I feel like they're just libraries that we don't tap into enough.
So today is a coaching episode. And I wanted to go through kind of 10 things that I think can help you no matter where you are in your business journey, but specifically in relation to marketing. And before we get stuck into that, just a reminder that the Marketing For Your Small Business course and coaching program is available now to enrol in. You can buy the course any time at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com.
But a couple of times a year we run this really awesome eight-week coaching program. So it means that not only do you get access to the course and you get the same access as anybody else who buys it. So you've got that sort of for a lifetime. But you also get me and a whole bunch of other small business owners kind of showing up with you weekly to go through every single module.
So, you know, you work on one module, you come to the coaching session, you work on the next to the coaching session. And not only does that give you an opportunity to really go deep into what it is you're learning, but it also makes you accountable to actually do the work because you have to do the work in order to show up to the coaching session to discuss it. And at the end of this program, we actually have the opportunity for you to present your marketing strategy, your marketing plan to the whole group and get feedback. And that can be a really daunting and scary thing. But it can also be incredibly rewarding and just awesome to validate your ideas with other people rather than what I see so many small business owners do, just continue doing this kind of scattergun, ad hoc approach to marketing and then get annoyed at the end of the year, at the end of a campaign or the end of a launch that it doesn't, in inverted commas, work.
So we go through everything from what marketing is, what it's not. We look at your audience, we look at validation, we look at content strategy. We look at your brand, how you're building brand awareness, but also creating enough moneymaking opportunities with your marketing to keep the business surviving and thriving. Hopefully. But yeah, we go through everything and it takes in basically everything I've learnt from twenty years being in the brand content and marketing space. So if you're interested in that, we will be closing the doors to the eight week coaching program on the 10th of August 2021.
So I'd get in there soon if I was you. And you can do all of that over at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. You can also find it on the My Daily Business Coach shop and we'll link to all of that in the show notes. All right. So let's get stuck into today's coaching episode, which is all about marketing.
All right, so as I said before, I have been in this space for close to 20 years, if not 20, when did I go overseas, get 20 years, 20 years, because I started my marketing career in advertising agency in the east end of London. Represent Shadwell. If you're listening a long, long time ago that I work there. But over the course of my career and I've worked as head of marketing for big companies, I've worked in senior marketing roles, places like Amazon and Audible in the U.K. and consulted to those companies in Australia and then consulted to a bunch of companies in their marketing teams, including places like L'Oreal, Etsy, Australia Post, big, big companies, as well as, you know, working so much with a bunch of incredible small businesses and their teams since I started my business six years ago. And what I want to discuss today is really ten. What would you call them? I feel like Mistake's is a really heavy word, but kind of 10 things that I see small business owners do and big companies do. I should say that really delaying their opportunity to enjoy their marketing, but also the opportunity to really get the results that they want to get from marketing. And I wanted to go through those ten because I think so often, you know, we don't know what we don't know. And if you've never worked in marketing, if you never had a marketing consultant, if you've sort of grown your business organically and really keep doing these things that you're told and yet you're not really getting to where you want to go, then this episode is for you. And similarly, maybe you work in marketing and things have gotten a bit stale or it's been some time since you sort of went back and assessed are we doing these things? And sometimes you just need a reminder from somebody else and you're like, yes, I know that we're supposed to do that. I'm going to actually sit down, figure out a plan, put a deadline and make it happen. All right. So in no particular order, here are ten of the top sort of marketing mistakes. I'm going to use that word, OK? That's what it is.
Ten top marketing mistakes that I see small businesses and big businesses do.
And I'm hoping that by going through these, you might take one or two at least, that you can start changing in the business in which you find yourself in.
#1. Not knowing their goals.
And I can't stress this enough. You can really hear the smile in my voice because so many times, especially at the start of my career, when I go into these kind of bigger companies and you sort of expect that bigger companies have their stuff together, and the more you go into them, you more realise that sometimes it's just a big old mess. And it's actually messier because there's so many people involved and so many different layers. But one of the big things that I see is just not knowing goals, people not being aware of what are we trying to do? So, for instance, you go into a company and they'll say, yep, we've been spending this much money on YouTube. We really think YouTube is a great channel for us. It's awesome. Why how does YouTube impact the bigger goals? What are your bigger goals? And not really vague things like, oh, we just want to make more money because that's a super they you can make a dollar extra this year and you've take the goal. But really, have you take the goal being really, really clear on firstly, what are we trying to achieve and then putting it into some sort of framework that everyone can understand so that everyone in the business, whether you have remote staff, whether you've got, you know, thirty thousand staff, everyone is clear on where we're trying to go and how marketing is going to help us get there. So the first one is not knowing your goals. And when it comes to that, like I said before, say, the example is we want to make more money. Great. Let's put that into a framework that's understandable. So we want to move from the business making X either in total revenue or in profit at this point. So as of this date in this year to the business making this much, again, total revenue or profit by this date next year. And I thing that I'd like to add to that is so that so you have from X to Y by win, so that so that we can increase our profit because maybe it's taken a massive dive since the pandemic began, or we want to do that so that we can move to a bigger studio so that we can invest in X, Y, Z, so that we can bring on more staff. So that's the first thing you really want to know. What are your goals and what are your marketing goals? You might have business goals and then you might have marketing goals underneath those, or you might have marketing goals as part of your business goals. Now, don't want to confuse you and I don't get too carried away, just number one, because we've got ten of these to get through. But the first one is really do I know my business goals? And if you've been listening for some time, you'll know that I like to just limit it to three any more than three. And you get really sidetracked, distracted, and you feel like you don't actually have a focus and. To the end of the year and feel like you didn't do anything. So, number one, the biggest mistakes that I see is not knowing the goals of the business and not making sure that everyone in the business is aware of those number two. And this kind of goes back to number one, limiting goals like this, limiting belief in terms of sales, in terms of what's possible. So you might have your goals, but you might have your goals. And they're basically the same goals that you've had over the last few years. And there's no real stretch happening. And it's not to say that right now with the pandemic, there's so much going on, not trying to say to put more stress or pressure on yourself, but often we can kind of get complacent, might be too strong a word, but we can get sort of comfortable, I guess. And as small business owners, comfort is fine. It's fine. But a lot of us started a business to push ourselves to be doing things bigger and better then potentially we could have had if we just stayed in an employed role. So you want to be looking at your goals and thinking, am I limiting myself in some way here? Am I not pushing this in this and this? Because I believe somewhere, whether consciously or subconsciously, that I am not worth that or that I could never have that in my business. For example, you might be a solo operator and you might say, yeah, my goal is to make this much money because, you know, that's what I've made every year. And really, I'd love to hire somebody to do my marketing. But, you know, then you tell yourself all the things that I can't afford them. I don't want to look after somebody else. You tell yourself all these things rather than sitting down and really assessing. Could I stretch that sales goal so that I could make that much money and bring in somebody in marketing who potentially can run this area of the business for me or really help with that creative ideation? Or maybe it's smaller than that. Maybe you want to bring in a photographer to take really beautiful photos of your content so that you can share them and feel really great about it. But again, you're limiting yourself with your goals. So be looking at your goals and thinking, are these the same goals that I've had for some time? If so, why? Why am I not stretching myself? And you might have great reasons to not do that. And that's fine. You know, when I look over the last couple of years in my business, I had my father passed away at the end of twenty nineteen. I just had a new baby. Then we went straight into a pandemic. Give yourself a little bit of breathing room. But also if you are in a position where you could be stretching that a little bit further, really think about my limiting what's possible because of certain beliefs that I may have around money, around worthiness, around how I show up in my marketing. So that's the second thing really limiting those goals and thinking it's just not possible. And what I love doing when I work one on one with clients is really stretching what's possible. And looking at what if that was double that, what could that to few business. And you see people suddenly entertain these ideas that maybe they've shot because of whatever reasons and sometimes even just the costing that they're putting into packages. And you think, wow, what is the limiting belief in your mind that is keeping these prices so low that you're actually way undercharging what the market value is for this particular service or product? So the second thing is to really think, do I know my goals? And then the second part, are they limiting me in some way? Am I really limiting myself? Am I keeping myself small for some particular reason? And if so, you know, some of the ways that you can get those reasons to uncover themselves, chatting about it with somebody else, getting a business coach, really journaling about it, really asking yourself, why do I believe this? Why, why, why? I always remember there was a great Dharma Talks podcast episode I listened to years ago. And the guy sort of said, you ask yourself, how are you? Why, how are you, why? So you might say, how are you do yourself? And you're like, I'm angry, why? And then you get to it. How am I how I feel about that situation. And you just keep going down this rabbit hole until you get to the actual thing. And I think sometimes when it goes to limiting goals, journaling, asking yourself, why do I believe this? Where did it come from? It could come from your parents. It could come from a one off conversation you had with a client once that really made you feel small and that you need to sit back into your box.
#2 Limit what's possible, really go big, think crazy, put it, put the craziest thing out that you can think of and then look at.
Why not? Why is that not possible for me? And sometimes this will be a really uncomfortable conversation. Other times it'll be really exciting because you're like, oh my God, so much more is possible than I thought and maybe I need to shift up those goals. So that's no too limiting their goals. Number three, another massive one, not really understanding their audience. So in terms of audience questionnaires, buyer personas, ideal customer avatars. There's so many things out there for you to do an online search in Google and find this sort of stuff, you can find so many quizzes to take about your ideal audience. But one of the things that's not always within the sort of information that's out there is to really consider the frustration that your audience currently has with your industry or your service or your product. And that's something that I go through a lot with my clients when we're looking at kind of audience validation, looking at their building, their brand, if they're launching something new, if they're launching into a new territory. We really want to understand your audience, not just from a perspective of demographics like that. This old this religion, they live in this part of the country. Their annual income is this. They're married, the divorced, whatever it is, those are pretty basic things. You really want to uncover the person underneath this psychology that they're in, the buyer psychology, the behaviour that they take. And one of the quickest way to think about that is the frustrations that they currently have with what it is that you're offering to say. For instance, with me business coaches, you know, there's a billion and one business coaches out there. And I think some of the frustrations and I've had these myself, I have hired business coaches in the past and I have a business coach at the moment in the US. And I've had frustrations with some of the business coaches in the past because I feel like they actually don't know what it is. They're purporting to know what they're promoting themselves as. And I think that's a common frustration. A common frustration out there is that anyone can be a business coach. And I potentially am giving thousands of dollars away to someone who actually doesn't know what they're saying that they know. So as you uncover that and kind of work deeper into that, you might be thinking, well, they're time poor or they really value their dollar or they are really looking for a kind of quick win in their business or they're really trying to level up or they're trying to transform something. And so by asking yourself, what are the top frustrations my audience has, you can then think about what the solutions are that you have to that frustration and how those can come across in your marketing. So, for example, if we were to have the the instance of someone who's looking for a business coach but doesn't necessarily want someone who's just decided two months ago to become a business coach and has never actually worked in marketing to give them advice about marketing, then things like having a logo firm, having how many years experience you have, having testimonials, case studies, all of those elements of marketing that you can use to alleviate those frustrations. And that really comes back to not understanding your audience. So, like I said before, demographics are fine and they're a starting point. But you want to go deeper into that. You also want to understand what is causing them to buy, where's their circle of influence when it comes to, again, what it is that you sell and how might you feed out your marketing into those particular spaces? So, again, for instance, if you are someone who sells, I not sure candles and you really want to get in with interior designers, it may be better off for you to go in and network or run classes or run like a Q&A or something else with a group of interior designers rather than be, you know, using a particular hashtag on Instagram and hoping for the best. Now, I'm not saying the second thing can't work, but when you really understand who my audience actually is, then you can look at where can I tap into the markets that best support that audience or that compliment my business that I could collaborate with in terms of networks or partners. The other thing that I see people not doing enough of is polling their audiences, asking their audiences for questions, you know, using their audience as a focus group because they're they're, you know, incentivising them with some sort of freebie, some sort of competition, some sort of voucher code or just, you know, the niceness of, you know, doing me a favour and answering a survey. But we don't often survey our customers enough. So when I go into companies, sometimes they'll say, we've got an email list, it's twenty two thousand. And I'm like, that's awesome. How often do you survey them? Never are. We have this many followers on social media. Do you ever do polls? Do you do questions in your stories? No. Do you ever do polls on Facebook? No. And again, we're missing this opportunity to really understand our audience. And if you've been in business for some time, maybe you're like, yeah, yeah, I did all of this at the start or I paid an agency to do some research and focus groups. And what we can fail to see, though, is that our audience, over time is changing. If you think about, you know, everyone knows I love Beyoncé, but if you think about Beyonce, it's like Destiny's Child audience. Those people have grown. I know, because I am one of them. They have grown and now they're moms and they've got kids. And she is growing right along with them. And a lot of her marketing is very much talking to that audience who's come along. She's no longer necessarily going, oh, well, we're just going to talk to the Destiny's Child audience that we had 20 years ago, because those audiences have changed and shifted and evolved. And what might have served people when they first signed up to your newsreader or your business or your service, offering a subscription may be very, very different to what they're looking for now.
#3 Not really understanding your audience.
So if you can take one quick win away from that point, you know, do a poll. Ask yourself, what do we need to know about our audience today? Let's do a poll right now and see what they say. Is it how we imagined? Is it different? And the other thing in terms of that as well that can be looked at is how much data do you have on your audience? And it could be things like getting people to fill in or complete their profile. If you have like a subscription service, it could be other sort of things that you send out to get more information on your customers. So that's number three, not really understanding the audience.
#4 Not validating ideas.
So validation is a huge part of kind of the customer journey when you definitely when you're starting out. But it can be something, again, that similar to surveys and really understanding our audience, we forget to do as we grow and become these bigger businesses. So, for instance, validating to anyone that doesn't really know what I'm talking about, validating your audience or validating your ideas is really testing the market before you put a whole lot of resource and energy behind things. So things like pre-orders fantastic example of validating your idea, you might think, well, we've been doing this sweater in pink and everyone's loved it. We're actually going to try it in an orange colour or an orange stripe. So it's quite different to the pink, but we want to see. So you might mock that up. And, you know, obviously you talk to your manufacturers and suppliers, but you might see even this possible. And then we're going to put it as a kind of quick idea on Instagram stories. And we're going to ask people if they love it, then we're going to go one step further and have a pre-order sign up. So sign up if you're interested in this and you'll get a particular voucher code or you'll get told about it twenty four hours before it's released. Those are all acts of validating an idea prior to it actually being released in the service based business. So in my own business, I do this all the time. So when I started marketing for your small business, I used to run, which is the course and coaching programme I talked about earlier. I started that originally as a live workshop and I started that pretty much as soon as I started my business. So six years ago and I ran that as live workshops and I ran them all over in Queensland, Melbourne, Sydney, regional Victoria, and then I ran them online as well. And I was validating things in that the first ever workshop was a validation workshop. I thought that I could do it in three hours, which was a total joke. Those poor people that came to that, because it's actually a full day workshop and it could probably even go over two days. And there's so much information in there, but really, really good practical stuff. So I was validating the idea by running that first workshop through General Assembly, which is an institution all around the country, that you can apply and run your workshops through. Another way that I validated my ideas in a service base was when I took marketing for small business online. I put it out there first. I said, hey, I'm going to shift this from just being live workshops to being available online to anyone in the world can go to marketing for your small business, dotcom and buy it. And what I found was that I put a pre-order up so people had to pay for it and then I would and I would create it. And that was quite stressful. I'm not going to lie. But I didn't I was pregnant at the time and I didn't want to create months and months of work if no one was actually going to buy it. So I put it out and I said there's going to be a bit of a gap between paying for it and being available for you. But people didn't mind. And we had people all over the world, Sweden, Italy, we had somebody in Malaysia. We have people like in India buy it. And it's incredible to see now what that's grown to. But it's such an awesome thing that I could put it out, get the money for it and then create it. So that's an act of validation. Likewise, last year I decided to change up my business coaching packages and I have one that's available that is basically invite only. You can only get onto this if you have already worked with me and if I think you'd be a good fit. So we don't have it on the website and we may change things up and put it into the new website that we're developing. But I validated that. First I came up with this is the new package. This is what it would look like. This is how it would be different to normal, one to one coaching. And I then went out specifically to, you know, ten, eleven people and said, this is what I'm thinking. How do you feel about it? You want to get one of the spots? And they came in, said, yep. And so as validating that if I had sent those emails out and no one had said yes or people would be like, nah, not really. For me, I would be like, OK, let me go back. Let me tweak it. And that we. Put it out again, and I think with our marketing, we're not validating things before we rush headfirst into launching something, we're not sort of taking a bit of a dip in the toe in the water and saying, OK, if I was to do this, what do you guys think? And I think also that allows people to come on the journey with you as recently talking to somebody who has a book deal. And they were saying, should I talk about it? It's not written yet. And I was like 100 percent. I talked about my book constantly before it was out. I had myself like Hyram and Officeworks printing it out. And here I am about to go in and see the cover options. And that helped people get excited about it so that when the book did come out, I had an audience ready. They're so validating your ideas is a huge opportunity that I think is missed when it comes to people's marketing plans that kind of have this idea. They get all excited about the graphics, usually put it together, make it look really cool. Everyone in the office thinks it's fantastic and they launch it and it's like crickets because there is no validating first with pre-orders, with just even simple DMS. To people who are thinking of this, what do you like sending a email? So an email from one particular SKU to say if we go back to that pink jumper example, everyone who bought this pink jumper, we're just going to we're just going to sort of test the market first. We're going to validate this idea of the orange jumper and we're going to send it just to those people first and be like, hey, it's the same it's the same cut. It's just this super cool orange and white stripe. Would you be interested and we'll see what happens. That's validating it. So that's number four when it comes to kind of marketing issues, mistake's challenges, not validating your ideas.
#5 Spending too much time in the awareness stage of the bio cycle rather than in the post purchase and advocacy.
So, if you use the bio cycle, you'll know like I do. It's a cycle. It kind of has five stages. You start in awareness, people move on to research. If they're interested enough, they'll go to evaluation, i.e. the right brand for me. Then they'll go to purchase post purchase and advocacy. If you're thinking about it in terms of a sales funnel, what's the top of the funnel spending all of your time in just getting more followers, more people in your email and not doing anything with those people, not nurturing them into a sale and ideally nurturing them after that sale into repeat purchase buyers or post purchase, you know, advocates for your business. So they referring people. And what I see all the time is that, yeah, people just focus way too much on I need to get my Instagram numbers up. Why? Why is that? Because you know that by getting another hundred people on Instagram, ten of those come to the site and three of them by and three of them are buying at a top price, a high kind of ticket item, or is it that you just want because it looks good and it's just vanity metrics and it's just getting more people to know about you and definitely depends where you are in your business. Of course, when you're at the start, you really do want to be driving awareness, but it shouldn't be 99% of your marketing. What I see so much is that people, instead of spending time in the post purchase advocacy, which is really where you're going to get bigger sales, because if someone's bought from you once and they've had a good experience, chances are they'll buy again or they'll refer a friend instead of spending our time in there, which can just be like your bucket of gold at the end of the rainbow. We spend all our time painting the rainbow pretty colour as opposed to getting people across into that pot of gold to love. That analogy makes any sense. Just made it up on the spot. But yeah, number five in the marketing mistakes is really spending too much time in awareness and not enough time in post purchase advocacy stage. So just to recap, the first five, No. One, not knowing your goals. Number two, having goals that are really limiting or having these limiting beliefs that lead you to not really make very big goals for yourself. Number three, not really understanding your audience. Number four, not validating ideas through your marketing. And number five, spending too much time in awareness and not enough in post purchase and advocacy. So before I jump into the next five, just a reminder, the marketing for your small business course and coaching programme is available now. And we run that a couple of times a year. It's an opportunity for you to not only go through the marketing for your small business online course, which is there any time that you want it at marketing for your small business dotcom, but going through it with myself and with other small business owners on a weekly basis. So we have a live call. You go through your module in your own time. You come to the live call, we go through it in depth. You ask any questions that you have, you relay any kind of challenges. You get feedback from myself and other people. And then at the end of the programme, you actually present your marketing strategy and marketing plan to the rest of us. So that is available until the 10th of August 2021, if you're interested, definitely head on over to marketing for small business DOT. All right, so the next five top marketing mistakes that I see are in number six and again, these aren't in any particular order, but equally, they all can have a really big impact on your business, negative or positive, depending which way you go.
#6 Treating every sale or client or customer as a one night stand.
And what I mean by that is literally, as I said, you know, getting the sale and be like, cool, great. And once the work is done by now, never going to talk to you again or once they've bought the product, they never hear from you again. And this really goes back to that kind of buyer cycle, what I was just talking about before, which was that, you know, it's six to seven times harder to get a new customer than to have someone who's already worked with you purchase again. So when I say the one night stand is that we spend so long wooing and, you know, looking great for this customer and then we don't spend that time afterwards in the same vein as, you know, why not spend, you know, not calling people afterwards or not pursuing any kind of relationship? So you want to be thinking about, say, if you're in the service based business, how often are you checking in with past clients? And it could be that you have certain seasons in the year. So you might say, OK, it's end of financial year. This is where I'm really relevant for whatever it is that you offer. And so I'm going to make sure that in the month prior. So in May in Australia, I'm going to be reaching out to people. Or maybe you know that in your particular industry say you work as a service provider to retail groups and you might think, OK, I know that retail groups are making their budget in February for the next financial year. That starts in July. So I'm going to be talking to them in December and January so that I'm part of those budget discussions in February and I can get onto it and I'm not then coming to them too late. And where they've said we've already created a budget, we don't have the space, sorry, come back to us next year. Likewise, it could be that if you are like I said, that consultant to retail groups, you are making sure that you're in touch with them in September, October before the crazy part of the year happens and they don't have time to give back to you. So it's just figuring out where is the frequency of contact that's really going to help me. And again, often people think marketing is just social media posts. So much of customer service, customer experience that's marketing, that sits under marketing. Marketing is your whole brand experience. So if I'm hearing from you and I've bought something from your store, whatever I'm hearing, whether it's a sales email, whether it's just a hey, how are you going, whether it's here's a link to a fun dance party, because I thought you needed a pip today. That is all marketing. And that's kind of coming back to number six, which is what I'm talking about. We had too much. We treat every sale and customer like a one night stand and we're not spending enough time in marketing post sale. So that might look like care instructions, you know, hey, you bought this bag from us. It's been two months. He has had to care for it. It could be. Hey, we would love to see how you're wearing it. Can you send a photo and you can get X amount off? It could just be, hey, I'm an artist and you bought a print from me. And I wanted to show you these amazing photos from the beach that I visited this weekend because it's really inspiring me. And where do you get inspiration from? It could just be a dream that you send on Instagram to be like, hey, we're going through a pandemic. How are you going right now? Do you need any help? These are all examples of kind of post purchase marketing, and that's something that I don't see people do enough.
#7 Being distracted by every shiny new social media platform.
And if you've been listening to this for a while, thank you. You will know I have lots of opinions when it comes to social media. I started my career in marketing way ahead of when social media began. And I just see way too many people think that social media is the answer to all their prayers. And we just you know, we're seeing more and more warnings come up from when you're updating, you know, iOS. So you updating a system, so many things will come up now saying we need to know if you want us to watch you. Basically on social media, there's so many privacy things coming up. And I think those will just continue to come up. I'm not saying that social media is going anywhere because I don't think it is. I think they'll just be different platforms and iterations. But one thing that I see is that small business owners get so caught up with, oh, my gosh, this is a new platform. I need to be on it rather than choosing the best connexion channels for their audience. And that really goes back to number three, not really knowing your audience, so being scared and thinking I better be on there in case they're there knowing your audience and also really utilising the platforms and the channels that you have chosen. And so if you've chosen three channels and so you might have email as a channel, you might have blogging or. Logging as a channel, and you might have one social media platform, so it could be Instagram, it could be Pinterest, it could be clubhouse, whatever it is. And using that really well, all of these social media platforms are incredible. That's why we stay on them. They're so addictive. But they also are constantly coming out with ways to keep us on the platform. And yet we may not be using that. I know in my own business there's so much I could be doing on Instagram that I'm not. Instagram is a key for me. My main channels, though, are this podcast, the website and my email. Oh my gosh, I forgot there for a second. And social media is a way of distributing it and connecting with people and guiding them back to those other channels. But for me on Instagram, my goodness, there's so much more I could be doing on Instagram. So rather than getting sidetracked with, oh my gosh, I should be on clubhouse all the time or I should be doing more detox or any tick ducks, I am like, I should just do this one channel and I should do it really well because I know that that's where my audience is and I know that that is where I can see clearly because I'm analysing it, people coming off that platform and onto the other places that I can control because you cannot control social media. So I'm not saying you shouldn't go on a couple if you enjoy them, but what I see is that people get so sidetracked by trying to be on everything and spreading themselves way too thin that they're actually just marketing on social media. And they're not guiding people from social media into other marketing channels and connecting points that have a much bigger impact on their business in terms of sales, sign ups and everything else that they're trying to achieve. So, number seven, being distracted by every new shiny social media platform.
#8 Not aligning their marketing plans with their personality.
So whether they love personality tests or hate them, I definitely think there's some truth in some of them. And it could be six personalities. It could be Instagram, it could be human design. It could be Myers Briggs. It could be any number of them. There's so many out there. The one that I often get people to go through is six personalities. It's three, six, eight personalities, dot com. It kind of integrates Myers Briggs with Carl Jung and a few other things. But one of the things that might come out when you do a personality test is that you're better suited to do marketing that doesn't force you out of your comfort zone. So say, for instance, podcasting is perfect example for introverts. It's a perfect example for people who are super busy. It's because you're just literally talking to a microphone. I don't need to put makeup on. I don't need to go anywhere. If you're being a guest on podcast, quite often it's just a Zoome call. That's audio. It's just like a phone call. So it's not actually as confronting perhaps as, say, being on a live panel might be for some people or speaking at a conference might be for some people. So I do both of those things and I think both of them fit my personality. I literally walk the line between introvert and extrovert. Every time I do one of these tests, I'm like literally on the line. And I think that because of that, I can do both of these. But say you go, OK, I need to be on all these panels. I need to be speaking at conferences that might be great for somebody else who's giving you that advice, like, yeah, get out there, build your brand and get on talk in all these conferences. If that doesn't suit your personality, the stress and overwhelm that might come from that maybe so much that it actually flips the seesaw the other way. And you don't actually just enjoy the experience or maybe you don't show up with the energy that you wanted to show up with. And it might be that, you know, being a guest on twenty podcasts might be better suited to personality and still get you the same outcome in terms of marketing efforts and objectives. Now, all of that is not to say that you can't change things up and everyone gets nervous when they do things like conferences. So I'm not for a minute suggesting that, oh, if you're an introvert or you're shy, you shouldn't put yourself forward. Definitely not. But what I want people to think about is how does my personality impact my marketing? And it could be that, again, you're doing something in your marketing. Maybe you've been doing something in your marketing for three years and you just do not enjoy it. And it's about looking at, OK, potentially maybe I'm doing podcasts and I don't like them. Maybe I want to be with people. And that's part of my personality. That's how I thrive. And I think just having that awareness of what is my personality and does it impact my marketing is a really key thing to have. So that's number eight, not aligning your marketing plans with your personality
#9 Switching direction because of your competitors rather than what your audience actually needs from you.
So I see this all the time, particularly in product based businesses where they're doing some. They're going along, their audience is loving it, and then they see their competitor or a bigger brand do something else and they're like, oh God, we need to do that now. And now. All their focus is gone on this other thing that their competitors audience need that maybe their audience doesn't need. So when it comes to your marketing plans, this really goes back to understanding what your goals are and really staying clear on those understanding what your audience needs, specifically understanding, you know, the key channels that you're going to connect with people and staying in that lane rather than thinking, oh, my gosh, I've seen that now I need to do it. And it's one thing if you've seen it and you're excited by it and it's it's fuelling your passion and your creativity and your inspiration, it's another if you've seen it and a whole lot of fear and anxiety comes in and you think, if I don't do that, too, I'm going to be left behind. So that's what I mean by No.9 switching direction in your marketing because of your competitors rather than switching direction, because your audience has told you that that's what they're looking for. So really, look at your marketing and be thinking, am I doing this because we know our audience loves this? Am I doing this because I love this because it just fits in with my personality? Am I doing this because it really aligns to our goals or am I doing all of this because I saw someone else doing it and I thought, well, we should do that too. So let's No.9, one of the mistakes switching direction because of competitors number 10 is not understanding that marketing is ultimately about brand loyalty, not just sales. Now, I'm just going to repeat that because I feel like it might be a new concept for some people. Not understanding that marketing is ultimately about brand loyalty, not just sales. So when people go through the marketing of your small business course, we dive into this in detail because there's really a spectrum that marketing covers. And we go through it because I think often people sit down one end of the spectrum, which is sales, and they think that's all marketing is that it's 24/7 selling. And then you have the whole oh my gosh, I don't want to do that. So I'm going to steer clear of marketing. I don't want to actually tell anyone what I sell. And so people are confused and they're kind of following you, but they don't really know why or what it is. Or then you ask for a sale and no one buys because they're all like, what do you want something from us? You didn't set that up in the beginning. And so I really want to kind of drive that message home, that if you're somewhere in that space, who does think marketing equals sales? I would really ask you to consider what might it mean to you and what might you think about marketing, if you thought of it from marketing equals brand loyalty, not just sales. Sales are a by-product of brand loyalty. When we are loyal to a brand, when we talk about the brand to others, when we refer people to it, when we buy gifts from it because we just love everything they're about, that's brand loyalty. And the sales, like I said, is a by product. But brand loyalty is so much greater than sales because it can mean if you pivot, if you change direction, if you make a mistake publicly, there's a whole lot of people there to support and encourage you to get back up, rather then it's just this mug and it's this price and someone else comes along and undercuts you and then, you know, where are you? So that's number 10. And to kind of recap, the last five number six was trading every sale and client and customer like a one night stand. Number seven was being distracted by every shiny new social media platform. Number eight, not aligning your marketing plan with your personality. Number nine, switching direction because of your competitors rather than because your audience needs something from you.
#10 Not understanding that marketing is ultimately about brand loyalty, not just sales.
So, I really hope that those mistakes that I've kind of gone through, all those challenges that I see so many small business owners and big businesses make has been helpful for you. And if you are someone that really wants to understand marketing and get really confident at it, be really clear about where you're going with your marketing, how to put together a strategic marketing plan so that you can analyse whether or not it's working, whether or not you're hitting your objectives, then definitely check out marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com, the online course is always available. You can buy that any time. And if you have bought that and you want to be part of the coaching programme, make sure that you check emails, because there would have been an email from us discussing the major discount that you get to be part of the online coaching programme. And if you're not, if you haven't bought the course before, if this is the first time you've heard of it, then definitely check it out because you can get the course and weeks and weeks of online coaching with me live and everyone else who wants to turn up over at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com and the coaching. And this program finishes for enrolment's on the 10th of August 2021, so if you're interested, make sure you enrol quickly so that you can claim your spot. And also you get instant access to the course as soon as you enrol. Even if the coaching program doesn't start until a couple of weeks later, we will be kicking it off. I think it's the 17th of August.
So if you're interested in that and you have any questions, feel free to email us at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com or you can send me a DM over on the gram at @mydailybusinesscoach. The transcript of this episode with all the details, everything that I've just gone through will be available over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/120 - episode 120.
Like I said at the start, if you are in lockdown sending you a massive virtual hug, I really hope that we come out of this soon. And I hope that I know there is no such thing as going back to what we had, but I hope that we kind of progress towards a more normal sort of stage of living if if some sort of new normal, I guess. And on that note, if you are in lockdown or you're anywhere in the world and you're really not coping, please, please take this as your sign to reach out to a friend, reach out to your doctor. If you are in Australia. There are so many places like Beyond Blue, so many mental health services like Lifeline, you can call them on 1300 22 4636 and just ask for help. And it can be really, really hard and scary. But the help is available. And even if it's just a chat with a friend and if you need someone and you don't have someone, feel free to text me or send me a damn. I'm at my daily business coach. I'm not a therapist, but I am happy to chat, to hear from you and see if I can help you in some way anyway. That is each episode 120. If you found this useful, I would love, love, love if you could share it with a small biz friend and help them and maybe they get some great use out of it as well. And if you have a second, if you get leave a review of you, it just really, really helps small business owners across the globe. Find this podcast. Thank you so much for listening. See you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
